U.S. banks post $37.6 billion in third-quarter profits

[IDemo]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Four years after a massive federal bailout, banks are recording near-record profits — a development welcomed by regulators but met with fresh demands by critics that the financial firms do more to benefit mainstream America.

The industry's third-quarter earnings jumped 6.6% from the same period in 2011, to $37.6 billion, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported Tuesday. It was the 13th straight quarter of year-over-year increases and the biggest profit since $38 billion in the third quarter of 2006, before the housing bubble burst.

Bert Ely, a bank consultant in Alexandria, Va., said the results reflect a combination of bankers shedding troubled assets, as they have done after previous financial downturns, in a "hardly robust" but nonetheless improving economy.

"We're seeing a pretty typical recovery, but slower," Ely said.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-banks-profit-20121205,0,6653567.story

[1ProudAtheist]

1. Fascism Rules

the day.........again. Big corporations, the military, and the government..........all in bed together, plotting how to steal even more from the poor peons like me.

[jtuck004]

2. 47 million on food stamps, 42 million in utter poverty, we send $40 billion a month to greedy

bastards so they won't lose money on their pursuit of the profit of others labor.

We created this, we should be cheering.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Whatever happened to the Community Reinvestment Act?

This was a good law with some real teeth, pushed into law by Carter and was
working quite well for awhile getting banks big and small to do projects that
had a clear public benefit, such as building permanently affordable housing,
micro-business start-ups, etc. benefiting lower income citizens & neighborhoods.

I worked this hard during the 90s and when I referenced the CRA, the bankers
were quite accommodating with our projects, provided of course that they did
pencil out to at least break even, and then to actually do that, and make it work.

The CRA apparently still exists, at least on paper, here:
http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/default.htm

When I google "Whatever happened to the Community Reinvestment Act?"
all I get is Right Wingnut bloggers spouting stuff about it, as if we should
forget all about the CRA, that the CRA was responsible for the 2008 collapse
of the economy. Unbelievable.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sa=N&hl=en&tab=lw#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=Whatever+happened+to+the+Community+Reinvestment+Act+&oq=Whatever+happened+to+the+Community+Reinvestment+Act+&gs_l=serp.12..35i39.5413.6028.0.7608.4.4.0.0.0.2.230.561.2j1j1.4.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.a8YJHIDIjKE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=ff3409d776c343af&bpcl=39468505&biw=1773&bih=919

[Poll_Blind]

4. $37.6 billion in...PROFITS. Profits. Amazing. nt

Pb